A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

Search form

Tag: beltway culture

Paul Pillar, writing at the National Interest, has already mentioned the provocative Kenneth Waltz essay on Iranian nuclear weapons that has inflamed the segments of the Beltway foreign-policy establishment who bothered to read it. But I wanted to expand on a couple of additional points Waltz raises.

It probably bears observing, first, that when Waltz writes that Iranian acquisition of a nuclear arsenal “would probably be the best possible result,” he is defining “best possible result” in the exact opposite way that the Beltway foreign-policy establishment does.

As Waltz wrote in his debate with Scott Sagan on nuclear optimism versus nuclear pessimism, “a big reason for America’s resistance to the spread of nuclear weapons is that if weak countries have some they will cramp our style.” Iran is a weak country who, with a nuclear arsenal, would cramp our style. Waltz opposes America’s style. As he put it in a 1998 interview, “I’ve been a fierce critic of American military policy and spending and strategy, at least since the 1970s.”

Read in this context, then, what Waltz sees as a feature of an Iranian weapon is what the American foreign policy establishment sees as a bug: the fact that an Iranian bomb will cramp our—and Israel’s—style. The foreign-policy establishment desperately wants to preserve the option of doing an Iraq—or Iran—war every so often if they feel like it. An Iran with nukes makes invading Iran a totally different ballgame.

What Waltz is after is “stability.” He has long argued that nuclear balances produce stability because the prospect of escalation to war between nuclear states is so harrowing that states seeking survival—which he argues all states tend to do—peer into the abyss and back away.

Deborah Boucoyannis wrote a fascinating article in 2007 arguing that Waltzian realists, by dint of their appreciation and support for balancing power—and antipathy for unbalanced power—are in fact classical liberals in the same sense that America’s founding fathers were classical liberals. They were obsessed with drawing up a constitution that would balance the branches of the American government against one another, not because the presidency, or the Congress, or the courts was itself inherently malign, but because unbalanced power is dangerous anywhere. One can even see this theme in the writing of early American leaders’ thinking on foreign relations. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1815 of his desire that nations “which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe measures of power, [and] that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among nations.”

This is what Waltz sees in the Middle East today: unbalanced power. If what you value is stability, then pushing the region toward balance, where no one can start a war with anyone else without risking his own survival, looks good.

Two other points. First, in order to get Iranian nukes to act as a stabilizer, Waltz has to argue that the Iranian regime is not suicidal, and that the primary reason it might like a nuclear weapon is for survival. I agree with this argument, and it bears pointing out that people as far away from realism as the neoconservative writer Eli Lake seem to agree as well. Unfortunately, the din of nonsense emanating from Washington seems to have convinced the American people that Iran would nuke Israel. In the recent poll from Dartmouth’s Benjamin Valentino, 69 percent of those surveyed said that Iran would be “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to use nuclear weapons against Israel.

Finally, this has been a useful insight into how detached popular commentary in America is from scholarship on the subjects pundits discuss. It was precious, for example, to see Commentary’s Ira Stoll scrambling to figure out who Kenneth Waltz was. For those with interest, he ranked third in a survey of international relations scholars that asked for a ranking of scholars “who have had the greatest influence on the field of IR in the past 20 years.” It’s a good thing that our architects and bridge-builders have a closer relationship with the engineering field than our foreign-policy pundits do with international relations scholarship.

For more than a decade, “net neutrality” — a commitment not to discriminate in the transmission of Internet content — has been a rule tacitly understood by Internet users and providers alike.

But in April, a court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission has no regulatory authority over Internet service providers. For many, this put the status quo in jeopardy. Without the threat of enforcement, might service providers start shaping the flow of traffic in ways that threaten the online meritocracy, in which new and established Web sites are equally accessible and sites rise or fall on the basis of their ability to attract viewers?

What a Washington-centric view of the world, to think that net neutrality has been maintained all this time by the fear of an FCC clubbing. Deviations from net neutrality haven’t happened because neutrality is the best, most durable engineering principle for the Internet, and because neutral is the way consumers want their Internet service.

Should it be cast in stone by regulation, locking in the pro-Google-and-Verizon status quo? No. The way the Internet works should continue to evolve, experiments with non-neutrality failing one after another … until perhaps one comes along that serves consumers better! The FCC would be nothing but a drag on innovation and a bulwark protecting Google and Verizon’s currently happy competitive circumstances.

I’ll give the Post one thing: It represents Washington, D.C. eminently well. The Internet should be regulated because it’s not regulated.

“If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

That’s one of the main themes of this week’s Capital Connection conference put on by the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association… . This time, policy wonks and government insiders will also be there.

Reed E. Hundt, former Federal Communications Commission chairman, and Tommy G. Thompson, former Health and Human Services secretary, will be speaking, as will VentureBeat blog author Matt Marshall and GigaOm author Om Malik, two well-known technology bloggers. Washington hasn’t been a frequent stop for them in the past.

It’s just one more sign of the region’s growing clout in the business and technology world. This is where stimulus dollars are doled out, where the economic recovery is taking shape, and where regulations — many of which directly affect businesses — are being crafted and rewritten. Of course, lawyers and lobbyists are getting a great deal of business helping folks find ways to tap into stimulus money… .

Companies familiar with the Beltway culture are well-positioned to benefit from the government’s increased role in nearly every sector… .

The conference, which is open to the public for the first time, demonstrates the growing nexus between the business community and the government, said Julia Spicer, MAVA’s executive director.

“The spread between the two worlds has tightened a bit,” she said. “The economy is the real focal point” of the conference, “and the government has a definite role in that.”